UNDP in Sri Lanka

UNDP, with support from the Government of Germany, to strengthen access to justice mechanisms for the most vulnerable and marginalized

05 May 2011

Disadvantaged communities across the world, often find it difficult
to access justice redress mechanisms for a number of reasons. Lack of
awareness and access on the part of the claimant and insufficient
capacity on the part of service-providers, are often reasons which lead
to a breakdown of trust in the justice system. The Government of Sri
Lanka has taken a number of important steps to restore people’s faith in
the legal system, including scaling up its implementation of the Equal
Access to Justice (A2J) Project. The scale-up of the A2J project has
been made possible with support of over $2 million (1,511,433 Euros)
from Germany over the coming two years (2011-2012).

The additional resources made available by the Government of
Germany focus on increasing A2J’s support to the court system, training
of government officials, including language training, legal aid,
alternative grievance redress mechanisms, prisons, and alternative
sentencing. This additional support deepens A2J’s commitment to
disadvantaged groups, including conflict affected persons, vulnerable
women and prisoners held on remand.

The key objective of the A2J project is to strengthen the justice
sector by working at two levels : at one level, it works with service
provides to better equip them to deal with the grievances experienced by
disadvantaged groups; at a second level, it works with disadvantaged
groups to help them access legal services.

This is the second phase of the Equal Access to Justice Project,
which started in 2004, with the support of UNDP. The second phase is
implemented by the Ministry of National Languages and Social
Integration. In addition, the project works in close partnership with
the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Administration, Ministry of
Land & Land Development, Legal Aid Commission, Bar Association of
Sri Lanka, and selected NGOs and community based organizations.